Hailing from the quaint, sleepy village of Las Vegas, NV, The Killers formed their rocking sound in 2001 and have since gone on become an international success, selling more than 16 million albums in the process. The band consists of frontman/lead singer/keyboardist Brandon Flowers, guitarist Dave Keuning, bassist Mark Stoermer and drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr., although they perform live as a six-piece ensemble, adding two multi-instrumentalist keyboard/guitar players to complete their sound.
To support the wildly successful Battle Born album, The Killers kicked off their 2012/2013 world tour with a series of sold-out arena shows in the U.K. and North America, with that leg ending Dec. 29 in The Chelsea at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. The tour resumes Jan. 16 at the Metro Theater in Sydney, with seven Australian dates, followed by the U.K., Europe, South America and then returning for some North American shows in May and then to Wembley Stadium on June 22, set to be the band’s biggest-ever standalone show.
The Crew
At the helm mixing front of house for The Killers is veteran live sound engineer James Gebhard, who has been with the band since 2004. Yet Gebhard didn’t exactly start out doing arena and stadium tours, and his career launched from far more humble beginnings.
“I always had a passion for music having seen a lot of live shows, he recalls. “While I was at university, I used to go to this dive bar that had a lot of bands. One night, the owner fired the sound guy, then turned to me and said. ‘Hey, you’re in here all the time and you like bands, so you want to do the sound?’ I had no idea what I was doing, but I said ‘All right!’ and worked there for a year and a half, teaching myself through trial and error. I got better at it, and soon bands were asking me if I wanted to mix other shows for them and it built from there. It was literally being in the right place at the right time and here I am many, many years later, getting paid to do a job that I taught myself how to do.”
Stepping Up to MLA
Gebhard is the type of FOH engineer who is never satisfied with the status quo. Constantly looking into ways of improving the sound of his systems, he became interested in Martin Audio’s MLA Multi-cellular Loudspeaker Array system, which has garnered rave reviews since its launch in 2010.
“There are a lot of PA systems that I quite like, such as the L-Acoustics stuff and the d&b and some of the Nexo stuff, but when Martin Audio brought out the original W8L, I absolutely loved that and the W8LC — even today — is fundamentally one of the best PA systems you can get. It’s so musical.”
But according to Gebhard, the “choice of PA really depends on what sort of music you’re working with. A majority of the stuff I’m doing now is the indie-type rock and pop music, and Martin Audio speakers really fit into that. We had been using the Martin L [W8L, etc.] system, before but I wanted to try something different for this new tour. I had considered moving to an L-Acoustics K1 rig. I do bits of work with SSE in England when I’m not touring and I had used a lot of K1 systems and had fallen in love with that.”
Gebhard’s quest led him to London-based PA/rental company Capital Sound, who had been considering Martin Audio’s MLA system. “It was still a relatively new system so not a lot of people had heard it.” Gebhard had also been in contact with Southern California-based Delicate Productions, who had added an MLA rig, joining MHA (Hagerstown, MD), Special Event Services (SES, of North Carolina) and On Stage Audio in Las Vegas as key North American companies in the growing worldwide MLA Network.
“After I had finished with The Vaccines, I took four months off, which freed me up to do some research and go to some events where the MLA was being used,” Gebhard explains. “I had done some shows with a band called Maximo Park where the local provider was using MLA’s. My first show with them was at Columbiahalle in Berlin. It’s known as one the worst-sounding venues ever — it’s horrendous. The show was a very important high-profile gig for Maximo Park, because the management and label execs were there. It was the preview of their new album, it was my first show with the band, who had missed their flights so there was no sound check. Yet it was one of the best gigs of my life; it sounded phenomenal and I put a lot of that down to the MLA system. Later I saw some more shows with MLA systems, including the Zac Brown Band in the States, and then went to Delicate’s warehouse, where I ran some multi-tracks of The Killers though an MLA system, which really sold me on it. I returned to England and talked to Capital wanting to use the MLA system with The Killers.”
The Killers’ Tour Rig
“We’ve got 14 MLA’s and two MLA-D down fill/in fills on each side and 12 MLA’s on the side hangs as well. In rehearsals in Las Vegas, we experimented a lot with Kenny Kaiser, our mains systems guy. We’re using 20 MLX subwoofers on the ground in a cardioid broadside array across the front of the stage. We also have three MLX subs flown in the air, because although the cardioid MLX has a 140° wrap, you lose the sides along the bleachers, so we fly three per side to fill in those areas. The MLX subs are amazing; there’s so much you can do with them as well.”
Turning It Up To 11
Asked whether The Killers are fairly loud on stage, Gebhard replies with a laugh. “Yes! They’ve got something like 12 M2s [d&b audiotechnik wedges] up there, and the side fills consists of six Martin W8LCs per side, so it’s kind of loud up there.” But on the serious side, he added that “this can be detrimental for the front of house mix, and we’re working with the monitor guy to get levels down, but it’s hard for many musicians who need what they need to get the performance vibe in their zone. A couple of them are on in-ears and the others are on traditional wedges and side fills, so with that mix of some on and some off, it’s hard to get the volume down. Brandon and the bass player are on wedges — probably the two loudest aspects of any monitor mix — are not using in-ears.”
Gebhard has long been a DiGiCo fan, mixing from an SD7 at with a 96kHz feed from the 92 inputs coming from the stage. He’s also running Waves SoundGrid, but no external outboard signal processing. “I’m using all plug-ins — it’s all Waves stuff. Mainly the API stuff and SSL stuff, like the Buss Compressor over the drum groups. I also am using some Waves L3 compressors on the mains, which really tightens up the mix, big-time. If you punch that in and out, you wouldn’t think it’s the same band playing — it really makes the mix so tight and fat.”
In terms of the money channel, Gebhard adds that “Brandon’s vocal channel is completely flat — straight up through the DiGiCo — nothing else! Just a Shure 58A and the channel strip in the SD7. Mic-wise, we have a mixture of Shure, Audio-Technica, Sennheiser and E-V — we don’t endorse anything and just pick what works best. The only stipulation is that Brandon likes the sound of his 58A. We’ve tried some other mics on him, like a Neumann 105 or the Shure KSM 9, but he likes to cup the mic a lot and, when you do that, the colorization gets really harsh. At the end of the day, if there’s something that a performer’s comfortable with and likes to use, then, as an engineer, it’s up to you make it work. That’s one of the nice things about the SD7. I can access the side chains on the dynamic EQs on the channel strips, so if he does cup the mic, I can compress that frequency and it doesn’t add anything detrimental to the sound.”
Instrument mic selections are also a combination, using of what sounds best. “We have a lot of Audio-Technica, with AE2500 on kick and AE3000s on the toms. There’s a Shure Beta 56A on the top and SM57 on the bottom of the snare, the overheads are Earthworks, the ride is an [Audio-Technica] AT4050 and an AT4051 on hi-hat. We also have a Shure Beta 91 — also in the kick drum — which the monitor engineer uses in the stage mixes, although I don’t use that in the house. The majority of drum mics are Audio-Technica, while on guitars it’s mostly Shure, with KSM32s on all the guitars used by the six musicians. The bass is miked with an [E-V] RE-20 and Shure Beta 98A. The DI’s are all Radial passive designs, which seem to have a warmer, nicer sound than active models. And in this digital age, anything that’s warmer fits nicely into the mix.”
Sound Checks
“We don’t necessarily have a sound check every day, but the band will come in and play some songs. I multi-track every show, so I can do a virtual soundcheck if they don’t come in,” says Gebhard. “I believe that a sound check can be detrimental to an engineer, because rooms change so much between that cold, empty venue in the afternoon to a full arena later when the temperature and humidity kicks up. A lot of engineers can get lost in trying to tune it too much early on when, by showtime, it’s a completely different mix. So if you’re comfortable where you were the night before, that’s a great starting point.”
Challenges? Yes and No
Aside from dealing with high stage SPLs, Gebhard is pretty comfortable with mixing The Killers shows. “With the SD7, there’s not much of a challenge, because I’ve got my show files with all my shows programmed and all my snapshots, which are mainly channel recordings,” he says. “Back in the analog day, it would be a hell of a challenge, because you’ve got multiple channel inputs coming in from the stage, with 26 used on some songs and 70 used on others. Once you’ve got the core of the band set in (bass and drums), it’s pretty stable, but when you add in the electronics and keyboards, the levels can be somewhat different between patches. Dealing with those gain changes during the mix can be a challenge, but I’ve been doing these songs for so long that that’s really not much of a challenge anymore. The mix itself can be quite complicated, with six musicians onstage playing as much live as humanly possible. One person could be playing guitar and then three different keyboards during a single song, so if you don’t really know that song inside and out, it can be a challenging mix to get your head around.”
Teamwork is Everything
But Gebhard is also equally quick to express his gratitude for his support team, particularly system engineers BJ Hemmingsen and Kenny Kaiser and Delicate Productions crew chief Phil Reynolds. He also appreciates all the help he gets from the sound company. “I have a long-term working relationship with them, and Smoother [Smythe] and Bryan [Bazilsky] at Delicate are really great. It’s not just about the gear and the tour — they put a personal aspect into being a vendor, and they’ll check up with you to see how you’re doing and always have a big smiley face.”
As a top first-call FOH mixer, Gebhard remembers back to his early days and offers this advice to novice engineers. “From an mix point of view, probably the best thing you can do as an engineer is to have confidence in yourself and what you’re doing, because I see a lot of young and very nervous engineers working at festivals. I always talk to them and ask if they need some help. The best thing an engineer can give them — without being big headed — is to have confidence in yourself. Look, if you couldn’t do the job, you wouldn’t be there in the first place, so have confidence, take a deep breath, relax and just get on with your job.”
The Killers’ Battle Born Tour
Sound Company: Delicate Productions (U.S.); Capital Sound (U.K.)
Crew
FOH Engineer: James Gebhard
System Engineers: BJ Hemmingsen and Kenny Kaiser
Audio Techs: Fumi Okazaki
Delicate Crew Chief: Philip Reynolds
Gear
FOH Console: DiGiCo SD7 with two 192 racks
Monitor Console: DiGiCo SD7 with two 192 racks
Signal Processing: Waves SoundGrid
Main System: Martin Audio MLAs with MLA-D downfills
Subwoofers: Martin Audio MLXs
Side Fills: Martin Audio W8LC
Stage Monitors: d&b Audiotechnik M2s
